IHOP shooting: Victim's wife chooses acceptance over anger

Heath Kelly loved being a dad to 2 young children

Sep. 2, 2012

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Tracy Kelly has spent the past year trying to manage her grief after her college sweetheart, her husband of 10-plus years, was gunned down at the Carson City IHOP, leaving her alone to raise their two children.

Her 5-year-old still doesn’t understand.

“Why did the bad guy hurt my daddy?” Tracy’s daughter often asks.

“I tell her the truth,” Tracy said. “I don’t know.”

Her daughter has always loved to gaze at the moon, and now she likes to tell people, “That’s where my daddy is,” Tracy said.

“She wants an airplane so she can fly to the moon and be with her daddy.”

Maj. Heath Kelly was sitting in a corner booth with four of his colleagues from the Nevada National Guard when Eduardo Sencion walked in and opened fire on the morning of Sept. 6, 2011. Kelly, Sgt. 1st Class Christian Riege and Sgt. 1st Class Miranda McElhiney were killed. Sgt. Jeremy Mock and Sgt. Caitlin Kelley suffered serious injuries.

Tracy said she worried about losing her husband when he served two deployments overseas with the Army, but said, “you tell yourself that call will never happen.

Tracy said she has not tried to find answers to why the shooting occurred or to learn the details. Instead, she said she has accepted that the whole thing is out of her control.

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“When it first happened, I had faith that I was not going to understand why,” she said. “To have faith to be OK with not knowing. That gets me through.

“Surrender. I have to. If I didn’t, I would be tormented, and I don’t want that.”

'Stroke of fate'

Tracy emigrated with her family from China when she was 10 and grew up in Los Angeles. Heath Kelly was a Louisiana native. But their desire to serve drew them to Norwich University, a military college in Vermont, and ultimately to each other.

“It was a stroke of fate to meet Heath,” she said.

Tracy was a freshman when Heath was a senior. They began dating after he graduated and became a commissioned officer, she said.

The Army sent Heath to Korea for a year, Tracy recalled. He was home for 89 days before he was sent to Iraq for 14 months.

“We began having children when he came home,” she said.

Heath loved being a parent.

“He was one of those guys who wanted to be a dad, and we got what we wanted, a girl and a boy,” she said. “We couldn’t ask for anything better.”

On Labor Day last year, just days before the shooting, Heath told their daughter, “Mommy gave me the two best gifts in the world,” she said. “He was very happy. He had no regrets at the time he left.”

But his untimely, heartbreaking departure left a huge hole.

“I miss his humor,” she said. “I miss his strong hardy laugh.”

Heath Kelly was well-known among guard members for his quirky, sometimes inappropriate humor, she said with a laugh.

“I miss his passion,” she said. “He was passionate about everything, even when he was wrong.”

They both were passionate, she said, and a heavy discussion or debate could go on for hours.

“And I miss the day-to-day stuff, those ‘How was your day?’ talks,” she said. “We were together for 13 years — married for 10 and a half. We knew each other so well. We would finish each other’s thoughts and sentences.

“I miss that partnership. I miss him every day.”

Before Heath’s death, they were planning their future with his career, including the possibility of taking a post in Washington, D.C., she said.

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Instead, Tracy wants to stay in Reno. She has purchased a new home and is settling in. She also didn’t want to move her children away from the people and places that are familiar. They’ve gone through enough change already, she said.

The outpouring of support and kindness from people, some complete strangers, made her realize how special the area is, she said.

“I think it’s Reno,” she said. “If I had been in Southern California, that wouldn’t have happened. It’s so big, and tragedy happens all the time there. You get lost. Here it’s different. That’s partly why I’m staying. I have a community that understands what happened.”

Tracy said she has come to realize how blessed she was, even with this loss.

“I had one person who loved me that much, unconditionally,” she said. “And someone whom I loved unconditionally.”

Heath’s death was also a lesson, she said.

“I’ve been given the knowledge of how valuable life is,” she said. “We can’t go through life not valuing and supporting each other. I’ve been blessed with the knowledge that we need to do that.

“I realized I had a choice of how to handle this. I could be in pain, I am in pain, and be in the anger and focus on the negative side, or I could choose to cherish each person in my life and live life to the fullest.”